Woke up early as it was really cold outside and in the cabin. There were a few coals left in the wood burning stove, but not enough to take the chill off the morning. Overnight I had opened a few handwarmers and stuffed them into a sock that I cuddled all night. They helped a lot! But now I had to get busy and begin to pack up. I had some souveniers to pick up in Marquette, most importantly, a trip to the Ore Dock Brewery, which opened at noon, so I had plenty of time to pack up all items that wouldn't be used over the next 24 hours, get the cabin cleaned and swept up, and take a couple of trips to the car with all my gear.
As I was leaving for town, I noticed this huge nest up in one of the trees along Harlow Lake Road. Not sure what lives in there, but there were a lot of large crane-type birds living on the lake. I could hear them batting their wings a couple of times early in the mornings and again, as evening fell. It was a loud thump, thump, thump sound that took a couple of days to get used to. At home, blue herons live up in large nests like this, but I have no idea what lived up in this nest.
Ore Dock Brewery was easy to find and had a great vibe to it. Lots of locals were in for lunch. I picked up a few 6 packs and made some sampler packs to take home to my beer friends and family. It was kind of funny walking around downtown with a case of beer in my arms. I went to a couple of other shops and used the restroom in one of the cute t-shirt stores. This was my first time in front of a real mirror - ick! I certainly looked like I had been in the woods for several days - hopefully I didn't smell like it too! I tried to make a point of boiling a pot of water each morning to "bathe" with, but according to the reflection staring back at me, I missed a few spots!
I made another stop at the Picnic Rocks to check in with everyone and observe a crazy seagull party going on. Then continued down to road, back to Presque Isle park for one last afternoon of rock hounding.
It was a beautiful, but chilly day. Due to limited time, I drove to the "sunset" side of Presque Isle to get straight to rock picking. A local artist was working with pastels along the path.
A little further down the path I found what I considered to be the sunniest cove with rocks and climbed down. Today was the first time I didn't put my bathing suit under my clothes - it was just too cold. But soon, I was warm with the wind blocked, and began to peel off some layers. I was wading in the water, up to my knees, with my butt to the lake when a huge wave crashed over me. I was absolutely soaking wet and spent the next hour or so drying in the sun, digging in the dry rocks.
There were some small openings in the rock wall where people had lined up larger rocks like books on a shelf.
I was losing daylight and still had a lot to do, so back to the campsite. This was the first day where the water really left me chilled, so I stripped off the damp clothes and put on several layers before lighting my last campfire. The winds began to die down as the sun set. It was cold enough that the butter was solid. I made some toast over the fire and opened a packet of chicken and dumplings. I did a final washing of all of my dishes, prepared the bialetti for a final espresso before leaving in the morning, and consolidated the water that was left to make sure the fire was put out for good, before heading to sleep.
I lit one last fire indoors. I had checked the weather while in town earlier and it was the first night that we had a freeze warning. I knew I wouldn't be throwing an extra log into the wood burner in the middle of the night because I needed the embers to be out before departure, so I found my last handwarmer and tucked it into bed beside me. This came in handy at about 3:30 in the morning! I ripped it out of the package, stuffed it into a sock and cuddled it until I finally got out of bed around 6am.
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